Hole saws, step bits and stock pots oh my!
Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:58 pm
I'm putting together a basic stock pot rig for my best friend and I have everything I need....well, I need to get ss flux but otherwise we're set. I do some metal work but mostly only cutting with an angle grinder and drilling holes. This will be my first attempt at cutting large holes in ss specifically. My initial assumption was that I could use a bi metal hole saw on my drill press to put a hole in the lid of the stock pot. I guess I was wrong, really wrong. The hoe saw approach barely even left a circular score in the metal. It heated up something fierce too, the lubricant I used started smoking almost immediately. My drill press only goes as low as 750 rpm which I think is way too high for a hole saw on ss. I quickly canned the idea and did a few experiments on scrap ss with a step bit. It appeared to do pretty well but until I'm 100% certain of my process I'll not wreck the lid of another, new stock pot. Any advice here? Step bit as good as I can do with my equipment or are there any other tricks folks here could share?